Direct answer
You feel less important because, without noticing, you began treating the role as the source of your worth, not just as a place where it was exercised. This is what I call The Surrender of Power: the moment when something external starts to determine who you are. That sense of loss does not measure your real strength, it measures how much of it you deposited in a position that was always temporary.
What the role actually carried
A role grants authority, access and visibility. That is real and should not be dismissed. The trouble begins when these resources stop being tools and become the answer to the question "who am I". When the position disappears, the question returns unanswered, and the absence hurts.
Where the feeling of shrinking comes from
What shrinks is not you. It is the structure that held your perception of yourself. While recognition came from outside, you never had to recognize yourself from within. Leaving the role simply reveals a dependence that already existed.
The way back to the center
- Separate what you did from what you are capable of doing. The capacity was not in the title, it was in you using the title.
- Notice which relationships remained once the authority was gone. They show the power that never depended on the role.
- Recognize your experience without waiting for the environment to confirm it first.
This is the shift from Ter Poder to Ser Poder: finding a strength that does not vanish when the position changes.